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Welcome to "Visionary Voices" the podcast where we dive into the minds of business owners, founders, executives, and everyone in between.
Each episode brings you face-to-face with the leading lights of industry and innovation.
Join us as we uncover the stories behind the success and the lessons learned along the way.
Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or just starting your business journey, these are the conversations you need to hear - packed with visionary voices and insights.
Let's begin.
So Peter, thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Visionary Voices.
Can you give us a top level view of what it is that you do right now and your journey so
far?
Yeah, absolutely.
Currently, I am helping small business owners uncover hidden profits in their business and
building out plans to work more efficiently and gain more control of their cash flow.
And so they can tend to move from chaos and burnout to a little more free time and free
cash flow.
So, you know, technically it's coaching and advising with those small business owners.
But there's, there's a lot that goes into that process that, that we help uncover and help
them build a roadmap to a successful entrepreneurship.
Nice, so how did you get into this line of work then?
You know, it's interesting going back, you know, even to when I was young, young coaching
and, know, helping education, coaching, teaching has always been something I've done.
even back when I was in high school, my senior year, me and a couple of friends coached a
little league baseball team.
So we were 18 year olds coaching nine year olds and, you know, God bless those parents who
trusted their kids with us.
but took those kids all the way up till they went into high school.
and then even in my first role, I was working in retail home improvement retail.
And as I became a supervisor and leader throughout training new people, new employees, new
supervisors, new leaders was always something I was passionate about and just had a
natural affinity for.
And then I went and got my coaching certification between home improvement retail and
going into a technology company and did that for a little bit and built a coaching team in
that technology company in my, my, I call it my second career and, and did that for nine
years and then left that.
earlier 2024, know, spring of 2024.
And that's when I started my own coaching and consulting business.
So reconnected with some mentors and everything fell into place.
So it just always had an affinity for teaching and coaching.
Yeah, nice.
It's very interesting journey for sure.
And it's interesting how it's all led to the next thing.
And coaching was something that was in you from a very young age anyway as well.
So it's really cool to see.
So when it comes down to, I guess, the service delivery of what it is that you do, how do
you help support these businesses when it comes down to building up their business, the
cash flow side, and all these different things?
Yeah, so we kind of have a six step process and you know, it starts with discovery, really
identifying what's the current state of the business, what are their goals, where do they
want to be and really doing a gap analysis there and identifying what are their biggest
obstacles and pain points and looking at the just a good holistic current state so we can
make a solution.
You know, it's kind of a diagnostic solution starting point and I call that the discovery
call.
And then from there we'll move into, if it makes sense,
we do the roadmap session and this is where we really build their business growth
blueprint.
This is an assessment, we look at kind of 12 core profit areas and identify opportunities
for them.
And it's really leveraging the power of the compound effect.
It's small incremental changes across a variety of areas, makes a tremendous difference in
the growth of their business over time.
And then from that assessment, that'll really tell us what's the next step.
that's, if we decide to work together, we're gonna do an onboarding.
where we bring them in, get them access to some online learning, access to the coaching
portal and plan out how we're going to execute the roadmap.
And then we do a kickoff strategy session.
And this is really deep diving into the vision.
And these are some of the particulars, a lot of businesses, the owner has a rough idea of
the entrepreneur, but they haven't done a great job of communicating it through their
business.
And so it's looking at their vision, their goals, their values and identifying, Hey, what
makes you stand out?
What's what are your three unique things?
and create your market dominating position.
And so that's the kickoff and strategy session, which really sets the stage for our
coaching interaction.
And then we go into the execution phase, which is a cadence of bi-weekly coaching calls.
And then we'll every quarter kind of do a half-day review offsite where we get the
leadership team together or if it's a solopreneur or smaller company, just the owner.
And then annual planning session.
then the last phase I call is evolution.
And that is
really looking at the long-term goals.
What's the 10-year target?
Maybe five-year, three-year plan from a horizon standpoint.
Do they have leadership development plans in place, succession?
Are they looking for private equity, looking to sell?
Whatever that next step is, that's the evolution phase.
Nice, yeah, it's a very coherent system, right?
You've got a lot of different things lined up and it progresses very naturally, it seems
like.
I love what you said there about, know, typically it's not, it's not like one huge change
they need to make.
It's just a load of little changes, small tweaks and optimizations to get where you wanna
get to.
I think it's so easy as business owners, we fall into the trap of thinking we need to do
something crazy and big just to turn things around.
But realistically, and most of time, it's just changing and tweaking the basics we're
doing, you know, there's little inputs, right?
Absolutely and you know to steal from Alex Hormozi he talks about new more better and most
of the time business owners are focused on the new and they spend all this time getting
excited about the new he's like we just need to look at what's working and maybe we just
need to do it a little better but we just need to do more of it and and it's it's not huge
levers that we need to pull a fascinating just something that blows a lot of business
owners minds is you know they look at their profit margin and say you're running a 10 %
net profit margin which
If you think service businesses, consumer goods, or manufacturing, 10 % is a pretty common
net margin.
To double your profit margin, all you have to do is cut your cost by 5 % and raise your
prices by 5.5%.
That would double your profit.
Small levers.
Yeah, it can be as simple as that, right?
Where you just make these small tweaks and you unlock so much value in the business.
Because then on top of that, right, when you're looking at enterprise value a little bit
later on, if you've unlocked that additional 50 % in profit, 100%, your enterprise value
is now doubled, right?
So it's a huge impact that you can have by making those tweaks.
I guess what's some of the biggest traps that people might fall into as well when you
start looking at these smaller businesses?
What's some of the traits?
of actions they're doing which maybe is really hurting them and you see it across the
board.
Yeah, it may be more specific, different industries might have, might be more susceptible,
but some of the common ones that really affect everybody is the mindset shift.
So they're very good practitioners of whatever they do.
Plumbers, they're great plumbers.
Electricians are great electricians.
Coaches are good at coaching.
It's making that shift from technician to entrepreneur and recognizing that when you own a
business, yeah, you have to be good at what you do.
You have to be a good landscaper.
You have to be a good baker.
You have to be a good coach, but you have to be good at marketing and selling.
And that transitions hard.
A lot of your time needs to be, Hey, I need to go really hit the pavement and get good at
marketing.
And then once I get some leads, now I've got to create a sales pitch.
I've got to be good at selling.
Otherwise nobody's going to get to see how good I am at doing the thing I do.
No, completely agree.
mean, sales and marketing, think for a lot of businesses, one of those things where maybe
try outsource it straight away and all these different things.
ultimately, because it's such a key component of the business, you need to learn at least
some of the skills necessary.
So when you are going to go find that talent or that partner, you actually have some of
knowledge so you can figure out, okay, are they going to perform?
Are they going to get the results we want to want to get?
Or if you can get it yourself, it'd been great.
But yeah, I agree.
think it's I think it's probably one of the most important.
things or skills in business because you can have an amazing product, you can have an
amazing service, but if you can't sell it, if you can't market it, the business just won't
grow.
Yeah, agree.
100%.
And so on that same vein, think another kind of common mistake that business owners make
is trying to in that marketing vein is thinking like a brand marketer versus when you're a
smaller business, when you're just starting out, you need to think like a direct response
marketer.
You know, you don't have a slogan like just do it or, you know, just a wonderful little
logo, like an apple with a bite taken out of it.
Nobody cares about your logo or your brand when you're just starting out.
They care.
Can you solve my problem?
Do you even know what my problem is as your potential customer?
Can you solve it?
And that's where direct response marketing comes in.
And most business owners, if they do market, they have no idea what the return on that is,
on the return on the ad spend or their marketing, what's their customer acquisition costs.
They got to get into those details and get good at direct response marketing.
I think that's another pretty common mistake that you see out there.
Yeah, no, no, for sure.
And it sounds like there's just a lot of different mindset shifts they need to go into to
really unlock this as well, because I think it's one of those things, especially in
coaching, where you can give them all the tools and everything, but ultimately the mindset
shift is what needs to occur.
I mean, how do you bring that out of people, to shift their mindset and change the way
they're thinking about these different strategies and systems and philosophies of
business?
Yeah, I love that question because that speaks to probably one of the biggest myths around
what coaching is as well.
Most of what people call coaching is either mentoring, teaching or training.
It's something other than coaching.
True coaching.
And this is how you really draw that out.
This is how you get into those mindsets.
True coaching is asking those deep, open-ended questions that really make somebody think.
And you know, you've got them when they look up and they start, you know, they're really
going inside and they're thinking.
And so it's asking those questions that they get some to kind of take a
of their outcomes and start to think into that and recognizing, you know, could be simple
limiting beliefs on how they manage money on pricing strategy.
You know, so often business owners are afraid to increase their prices because they're
going to lose all their customers.
And, you know, then they get caught commoditizing their business in the race to the
bottom.
So those questions really help kind of root out some of those mindsets and, and, and it's.
I may have an idea or a thought about something that'll solve your biggest problem, but I
don't live your life.
Even if it worked for me in the past, what I may have done may not have been the best
solution even for me in the past and certainly not for you in the present.
And so I've got to be really cautious as a coach to ask those questions and let the
business owner think into their solution and own it.
Yeah, for sure.
Because it's one of those things where they'll just have all the knowledge when it comes
to the industry, the business, the product and everything.
So if you can get them thinking about it first, they're going to come up with probably
solutions which are better than what we could probably come up with sitting outside of the
business as well.
I think yeah, definitely asking those those hard questions is definitely where people need
to start to begin the process of changing and turning around their business and starting
to scale up and doing achieving the goals they want to do as well.
When it comes to your own business.
Why did you make the shift into starting your own business?
Because I know for a lot of people, right, they might sit on the fence for a long time,
might not even execute on it.
So why did you then execute on that and go down the entrepreneurial route yourself?
Yeah, I feel like I've always had some of those entrepreneurial thoughts.
You know, I had an uncle that ran a construction business and my grandpa, my mom's side
owned an HVAC shop.
And, you know, even as a young kid, we had a little, lemonade stand.
had paper routes.
we took the low where the Creek like came around a storm drain and we turned it into like
a local swimming hole.
And we went to the, and bought a bunch of like candy bars and stuff and tried to sell a
concession stand.
So we've done all sorts of crazy stuff.
and then even, you know, doing some network marketing when I was in college.
So I've always had some entrepreneurial desire to really, you be my own boss and even my
career choices, you know, working for the Home Depot.
One of their core values was entrepreneurial spirit.
And then working in technology for Dish, you know, still a founder led company.
And, you know, one of the core beliefs there was you're only bound by your curiosity and
really putting yourself in the room.
And so I've always had those, those inclinations of entrepreneurial.
So when that, you know, my last job, when that went away, I was having a conversation with
my wife and she's like,
hey man, you've always been entrepreneurial, you've wanted to start your own thing, why
not now?
We've got some savings built up.
It's amazing how fast that goes.
So you gotta go get some customers.
But it was just the right time and reconnected with a couple mentors and reconnected with
one and found one new mentor who've been really instrumental in helping me be successful.
So you gotta have coaches and mentors to work with to really get a leg up and be
successful in what you do.
Yeah, for sure.
mean, one of my questions was going to be how important is mentorship in your life, right?
And yeah, yeah, for sure.
Because I think for lot of people, it can be one of those things where you meet that one
person that just opens and unlocks the doors to so many different things.
And not necessarily always just connections they make or whatever, but just the level of
thinking that you didn't even know was possible before, right?
Or what's actually possible in this marketplace.
mean, I know when I started my business, for me, I just wanted to make a little bit of
money on the side.
That was what I wanted to do.
joined a business group and I was meeting people my age or even younger than me doing
crazy numbers.
I didn't even know it was possible at the time that you could actually do this from the
skills I already had.
And so when you meet those individuals that just unlock that for you, it's just
incredible.
It's why I always tell people if you're starting a business or anything, just try and meet
more business owners just in general, because you can understand and learn from them just
in passing conversation, grabbing a coffee with them, whatever that looks like.
You need to get out there and start speaking to people to really understand it.
Well, entrepreneurship is lonely.
mean, you can't talk about your problems with your employees.
You can't talk about your problems with your partner or your spouse a lot of times.
They just don't understand.
And those emotions you go through as an entrepreneur, know, it's ups and downs having
other business owners that you can talk to and work through some of those challenges.
yeah, mentors, you never know where they might show up.
And, you you're not going to find one person that's going to be a mentor in every area of
your life.
You know, you might find a mentor who's really great at marketing and can really help you.
another mentor that maybe is great with the financial management piece.
It's really recognizing the value that you can get from those different folks.
Yeah, for sure.
mean, circling back a little bit as well, what you said at the start about talking about
cash flow, right?
And how you can, you know, how you consult with people to talk about cash flow and how to
really optimize that.
So I guess what, what's some of the lessons that you've got from that, which, you know,
some listeners might be able to take in and start looking at their business and figuring
out what to change.
Yeah, it's funny.
I just had a conversation with my accountant last week and we were talking about just
different challenges that business owners have.
She's about to have a conversation with literally every client that's a business owner in
the next couple of months, because here it's tax season here in the States.
She said, it's shocking how many people that come in as new clients who haven't filed
taxes in a couple of years or, you know, 30, 40, $50, $100,000 back.
And, and, know, they have to increase cashflow in order to solve that problem.
So I think one of the, one of the key lessons is, you know, there's, and I put a, a post
on a group that I have on LinkedIn.
One of the things is having accounts that you immediately deposit your money into to make
sure you cover your taxes, to make sure you cover your, you know, fixed costs, to make
sure you recognize, you know, you put some money
a way for reinvesting back in the business.
Whatever that is, making sure that you're covering the foundation first.
That's one.
Secondly, is going back from time to time is re-auditing everything.
Had a client we were talking to and they're a fairly large size company, had about 150
employees.
and you know, 14, 15, just million dollars in revenue.
They went back and we're just going through old subscriptions, whether it be software
subscriptions.
They had an IT service contract that they, that was kind of a duplicative contract.
Cutting that saved them $600 a month.
And so just like that $7,000 to the bottom line.
but con you know, subscriptions, contracts with, software, things like that.
you know, just do you need the size of office that you have?
Do you need, you know, less warehouse space?
How much inventory are you carrying?
If you have a business that carries inventory, roofers are, you know, that roofing
companies sometimes carry inventory or HVAC.
How many supplies?
Do they need, you know, simple things like that that really suck up your cash flow.
So it's a lot of times not significant amounts of money that add up to significant profit
drain.
And then another one that's a big one is efficiency of the workforce.
You know, how often do you go back and audit your organization chart and really evaluate
what's the work that needs to be done and are people really being effective and efficient?
Another business owner talking to had an account manager and you know, they were paying
all their account managers a fixed salary.
And there were two risks with that.
One is are they being as productive as they could be if they're on a salary and there's
no, you know, commission or incentive to grow the sales base.
And two, you know, how often do you evaluate when you look at benefits and all the other
costs that go into it, it's not just salaries.
You know, you're looking at one and a half times somebody's salary to
to keep them on staff.
And so they were re-looking at the structures.
Did they move to a base plus commission structure and uncap that commission?
Now somebody's motivated to go out and they could double their salary literally and the
benefit of the business as your sales grow.
So it's evaluating that and then evaluating, you know, are these people, are they all
rowing in the same direction?
Are they committed to the values that your company has?
And if they're not, that's a productivity drain.
That's an efficiency drain.
Who knows that could be spreading cancer throughout your business.
It's costing you 10
of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Yeah, what I love and I think the core message from this is order everything, right?
Order everything you can because if you do that, as you said, right, you're going to
notice these different patterns, these different things, which you can, as we've been
speaking about, those little changes that you can make, which will add up to these huge
unlocks within the business itself.
But you need to go through that process of doing those orders.
And I think for some small business owners, right, it can be scary because, as we said,
with marketing, they just don't, might not know anything about marketing.
And so when it comes to finances, again,
they might not know how to use a spreadsheet or never look at the spreadsheet.
it's more of an education piece as well when it comes down to it because they need to
understand how to do these tasks.
But once you understand how to do it, just do it all the time as much as you can because
you'll figure out these different things to unlock within the business.
Yeah, and it's time well spent, right?
It's an interesting thing.
You talked about they may not know those components of the business well, but you can't...
You can't just pass that off, delegate it and not be involved in it.
You have to have an awareness of it.
You know, if it's finance, you know, one of the things we do in the onboarding process is
go through and ask, Hey, who's your bookkeeper?
Who's your accountant?
Does your accountant do strategic planning with you and talk about tax strategy?
Do they, you know, review everything with you?
Or have you just surrogate at all the responsibility and you just signed the form at end
of the day, you're responsible for everything that goes on in that business.
And you can't, you can't claim ignorance.
You know, it's like, you know, going down the highway,
speeding, you get pulled over, hey, I didn't know what the speed limit was.
It doesn't matter.
You're still responsible.
So the business owners have got to really be in that, but they don't have to be experts.
They just have to ask questions.
They have to know enough.
And that's why I always recommend top performers in every field have a coach.
They have somebody that will ask the questions they may not ask.
lot of business owners are visionaries.
They're entrepreneurs.
They're not
details people that want to sit in finances or in marketing or in the weeds, you know, and
maybe you need to look for that operations person on your team that can help you really be
focused in those areas.
Yeah, for sure.
So switching gears a little bit, talking about your journey and then circling back to
that, have there been any significant turning points for you within the journey of
starting the business itself?
Any points where you just, something's happened and you're like, ah, this is the issue
I've been having and that's switched all around for you yourself on your own journey.
Wow.
In starting the business, so going back, you know, when I first got my coaching
certification, I wanted to start my own business and did some leadership development
training, but realized I really didn't know enough about how small businesses worked.
So I, you know, looked out what's the learning gap that was there for me and went out and,
you know, spent some time working in merchant services, credit card processing and.
got to know a lot of small businesses and really understand the operations of a small
business a little bit better.
And then since I have, you know, this summer restarted that, again, I wasn't concerned so
much with the service delivery, but it was recognizing how I do the things, like physician
healed I self, right?
If I'm gonna give a business owner advice, I'd better have an idea of what...
I'm going to prescribe to them.
it's, you know, take your own medicine, eat your own cooking, if you will.
And so it's, recognizing, I making sure all my expenses are covered and setting money
aside for taxes?
When I am, am I using direct response marketing in the
stuff that I'm putting out there.
Do I have a sales funnel?
Do I have a process?
Do I have lead magnets that I'm using?
So am I doing, know, walking the talk?
And for me, some of the key lessons have been just tap into colleagues who are a little
further on the journey and tap into those mentors that can really help me out.
you know, working with my coach, I've got a coach who, you know, she just even last week
challenged me to the point where I was like,
you know, face was getting red, I'm a little hot and getting a little sweaty.
Like, man, this is really uncomfortable because she was not taking my answer.
And she's like, I think you've got a limiting belief here on this that you probably need
to examine.
And it was such a great reminder of, yeah, business owners are vulnerable when they're
working with a coach.
Like they're being really vulnerable.
They're trusting.
And so it is an uncomfortable spot to be in and, and recognizing that that's been a big
aha as well.
that not everybody's just like, yeah, I totally wanna go get a coach.
Of course I know I need it, but it's vulnerability that takes a lot of courage.
Yeah, for sure.
mean, it's almost like therapy in a way, right?
For a business owner, you know, sitting with a coach getting asked these difficult
questions.
I mean, I remember the first first mentor I had, right, is constantly challenging
different things.
I was saying, well, why do you believe that thing?
Why are you thinking that way?
Why are you doing the action?
I'm really questioning things.
was like, at one point, very early on, I was like, I'm getting really annoyed at this.
I just want to do this.
But then later on, a little bit down the road, I understood actually,
these things are true.
need to start questioning these beliefs that I have within the business or, or whatever
it's going to be, because it's so interesting.
It's like, like what Moses says, I can't remember the quote word for word, but you know,
we never truly think through those beliefs that we've, we've always had, right?
We just, we just believe them.
And so when you start really deep, deeping, going deep into it and really understanding,
you know, these things that we think about, you why do we think about these things?
And that's the thing with entrepreneurship, right?
It's
It's such an interesting personal development journey where you just change so much in a
very short period of time as well.
And it really brings it out of you.
Yeah, I love that.
know, the examining your beliefs and really it takes courage to do that.
You know, my coaching mentor says you can't see the picture when you're in the frame.
And that really brought it home for me going, yeah, you need that person that's looking
back to reflect what's going on in the picture and really help you.
recognized because most of our beliefs were raised in whatever environment we're raised in
and we don't question those beliefs and until we do and kind of deconstruct why do I
believe what I believe, I love that your mentor was asking those open-ended questions.
Your mentor is also a good coach so those are some good questions.
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, the other thing as well with this is if some people are sitting there thinking,
okay, I need to go find a mentor, you know, sometimes that can take a little bit of time
to find the right mentor for you and everything.
But I mean, one thing that really helped me is, you know, from some of these groups that I
joined to some other business owners is every week we jump on a call and just catch up
about the week.
And it's so interesting because over time we started to realize and understand each of
ours, you know, flaws in a way, let's say, where for me, I have again, shiny objects
syndrome.
love
I'm very technical, I love building things out, right?
If I can build out this app or automation or something, then I'm gonna build it out
because I just love doing those things.
But ultimately it's a big distraction against the main services that we do.
And so one of my friends, he pulled me up on that, after a few months of us talking, he
said, do you know what?
There's a pattern here.
Whenever things start getting hard in the main business, you start looking elsewhere and
start building these things out.
And it something I never really realized before myself.
And so, yes, it can be from that mentor, right?
Who's coaching you massively.
but also from that accountability partner, let's say.
And you can find that in pretty much anyone, especially in business groups, where you can
become friends with people and just start having those calls and catch-ups and everything.
it's so good.
Everyone needs to do that.
Yeah, it's great when you get to know and build those relationships and people recognize
your patterns and habits that you're like, I didn't even realize I was doing that.
Yeah, for sure.
And then when it comes down to, I guess, the coaching industry, how do you think this is
gonna change over the next 10 years?
Because again, automation, AI, all these different things coming out, how do you think
this is gonna impact the coaching industry in general and specifically what it is that you
do?
Yeah, think it's interesting.
My business advisor mentor, actually has a newsletter out there called the AI Business
Advisor.
And, you know, looking at it that
Artificial intelligence is phenomenal.
powerful.
And especially if you look at the new open AI model that just came out where they're
getting closer to AGI, you know, it's, it's fascinating.
It looks like it'll definitely make us more productive and more effective.
It puts a lot more tools in the tool belt and, know, looking at being able to, to leverage
tools, whether it be in creative, whether it be in, just automations and how workflows get
done where fewer employees can do the work of more.
but also in providing advice and strategies.
I think it'll help there.
There's a phenomenal program or tool out there, and there's several different companies
that are doing some work with this, but one is a company called Udly, and they've got a
really powerful AI coaching tool, and it's more mentoring.
It's not gonna ask you the open-ended questions, but you record something into it, and you
can use it for interview practice, presentation practice.
a lot of different things and it provides you feedback on how you did.
And you can do things with your business plan where you can run it through, it'll analyze
it, not usually a different tool, analyzes a business plan and it'll come back and give
you recommendations for how to tweak your business plan.
So I think it'll make coaches more effective.
I think in general, a lot of people out there that are doing coaching and they're not...
focused on becoming masters of the craft.
And I think this is a risk is people go out and get, you know, whether it be ICF or the
European Mentor Coach Council, they go get their certification and they're like, all
right, I'm done with school.
You
And they don't work with a coach and they don't get the continuing education.
They don't recertify that they're at risk.
think AI, you know, an AI coach could replace them because they're not really becoming
masters of the craft and elevating the craft.
but I think, you know, true that, that there's just something magical when two human
beings get together.
it's that idea of the collective consciousness is raised and you know, questions pop up
that I never, I wasn't thinking about that question, but it's that intuition, the teacher.
within that says, ask this question.
And it's the exact question that that person on the other end of the line or sitting
across the table from me needed at that moment.
And that's where I don't think AI can ever replace coaching truly because you have that
collective consciousness that's there when two people or more together in the room.
Yeah, I completely agree.
think as you said, it will make everyone a lot more efficient.
And I think as well, looking forward, if people can maintain a lot of the human element to
it, right?
As you said, you know, when you're connecting with someone on a call and speaking to them,
things come up, which just wouldn't come up normally.
Then in a sea of automation and AI businesses and everything, then that's going to be your
USP because people are going to want that.
People are going to want those connections and things like that as well.
And then someone on podcast, we're talking about this as well.
And they said, it's going be interesting to see how this changes across the generations.
Because obviously there's a whole new wave of generation coming through which automation
AI is actually born into it.
So are they going to be able to connect with these AIs and automations things going on a
lot easier than maybe we can as well.
It's going be an interesting thing to see.
I do think at least for the next many years, it's going to be a case of maintain.
the human element if you can within your business, but yes, use it for efficiencies where
you can, where it makes sense to.
Yeah, definitely you gotta educate yourself on what's coming.
Otherwise, you you can't just opt out and go, I want to avoid it because you will get
railroaded by it for sure.
Yeah, for sure.
So I mean, one of the final questions we always ask on this show is if you can go back to
your 18 year old self and you can only take three things with you, whether it's business,
knowledge, philosophy, some technical knowledge, what would those three things be and why
would be those three things?
is a very, very good question.
If I could go back to 18 year old self and take with me the three things that I would take
would be the, would say over the years, my growing fascination with technology.
So go back and really understand computers, how they're programmed technology at a deeper
level.
Fascinating, you know, I never went into engineering, but I was always really
mathematically driven in school, you know, had model rockets, was always curious about how
all those things worked.
So maybe getting more into the engineering side of technology would be one piece.
The second one would be recognize the power of
solitude and reflection time, just being quiet and being still.
I did not appreciate that until well into my thirties.
And that one has been a key lesson.
And the third one would be have the big beginner's mind to get out of your comfort zone as
much as you can, as often as you can and as frequently as you can.
And, you know,
This is, you know, I'm closing, I'm closer to 50 than 40, much closer.
I'm about to enter my last year of my forties here in a couple, couple of weeks.
And, you know, from 45 on has been some of the most productive years of my entire life,
you know, running multiple half marathons, marathons, climbing 14ers.
you know, I always, you can see the guitar is hanging on the wall behind me.
I always want to be that rock star.
And, know, finally started playing in a band and getting good at playing live music and
all those things that I was afraid to take risks on.
when I was younger.
Just get out of your comfort zone, don't be afraid to look like an idiot, and that's how
you get ahead.
Awesome, I think that's a great message to carry on to anyone who's listening.
Just take the risk and do the thing that you wanna do because time waits for no one,
right?
So you might as well just do it now.
Amazing, amazing.
Well, look, thank you so much for joining me on today's episode.
I've really enjoyed the conversation.
Yeah, I appreciate you inviting me on and hopefully add value to your listeners and love
what you're doing and looking forward to seeing your continued growth because you're still
super young.
got a lot of good things going.
Thank you.